Arizona woman Erica Morales never got the chance to hold her quadruplets before passing away at a Phoenix hospital on Friday.
“They were transporting her from the surgery to whatever room, and she was still unconscious at that point. So, no, she never got to see them,” family friend Nicole Todman told KPHO of Erica, 36, who delivered three girls and one boy by Caesarean-section. Erica was admitted to the hospital last Tuesday, when she was about 31 weeks along, for high blood pressure. It’s unclear what complications led to her death.
Although the babies — Erica, Tracey, Paisley and Carlos — were all between 2-1/2 and 3 lbs., they are reportedly doing well in the neonatal intensive care unit.
“Throughout the whole pregnancy, she has been so focused on making sure the babies would be healthy,” Nicole said. “They wanted to make sure they would be brought into the world as healthy as possible and as big as possible.”
Nicole said Erica and husband Carlos were the “perfect couple” and were very excited to have children after years of fertility treatments and a miscarriage.
“Understandably he is heartbroken,” Nicole said of Carlos. “He is incredibly joyful to see his kids. It is bittersweet.”
Nicole began a GoFundMe page to help Carlos offset the costs of raising four children on his own. She said for the account, “This is an extremely emotional time, Erica’s passing is traumatic and my goal is to help ease the financial worry as much as possible so every dollar helps if it’s $1 or $1000 it will all be used to provide for the beautiful babies Erica fought so hard to have and in the end gave her life for.” Within the past two days, they’ve raised more than $103,000.
